The U.S. Justice Department has not found evidence of election fraud that could have turned the result of the 2020 election, Attorney General Bill Barr told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
Barr’s statement cuts against President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread fraud and comes weeks after Barr first instructed the DOJ to probe any election fraud claims they may receive. Barr was also seen entering the White House soon after his interview with the AP, according to White House pool reports. Trump has still not conceded the election, with White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany saying he won’t until his legal challenges are exhausted.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP. (RELATED: REPORT: Rudy Giuliani Has Discussed Receiving Preemptive Pardon With Trump)
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller, but Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani issued a statement soon after the AP’s report.
“With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation,” Giuliani said. “We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined. We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud. As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ. The Justice Department also hasn’t audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Barr tells AP that Justice Dept. hasn’t uncovered widespread voting fraud that could have changed 2020 election outcome.
— Mike Balsamo (@MikeBalsamo1) December 1, 2020
Barr also appeared to throw cold water on allegations from pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who claims Dominion voting machines were programed to gift Biden extra votes. He did not mention her by name, however.
“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Biden told the AP.
Trump and his campaign still have a number of lawsuits in play in Wisconsin and elsewhere, but their number is dwindling. The December 8 deadline for election challenges is also fast approaching, and the campaign’s lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada have all been withdrawn or thrown out, to name a few.
Trump alleges that millions of mail-in ballots were wrongly accepted and broke for Biden and that GOP poll watchers were kept from having “meaningful access” to the voting process. His campaign argued in a Tuesday lawsuit that more than 220,000 votes were wrongly counted in Wisconsin, a state Biden won by more than 20,000 votes. Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers certified the state’s results on Monday. The Electoral College will officially vote to certify the national results December 14.